Covid-19: Prisons and Offender Rehabilitation

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for securing this debate and for his excellent introduction. Many of the questions I had have already been asked, but I want to focus on the excellent suggestion from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester that we should see daily reports on the numbers in prison, the numbers released and the numbers of infections, so that we can monitor what is happening. I also second the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, regarding female prisoners and their particular vulnerabilities. However, I want to spend this brief time focusing on a group of people who are not prisoners, criminals or accused of any crime—people in immigration detention centres, and those who seek asylum and are housed in often very inappropriate housing conditions, being forced by the Government to be in those locations.

Portugal has given full citizenship rights to migrants and asylum seekers for the course of the virus. Is that something the Government will consider? Will they look specifically at freeing everyone from an immigration detention centre and providing them with appropriate accommodation, housing and support? I express the concern that the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group has expressed about the conditions at Urban House in Wakefield, where 180 people share one group of toilets. Cleaning has gone up from once to twice a day, but some people do not want to be there, for obvious reasons of concern.

We need to focus on detention centres, but I have a final question on prisons. How many of the 82,000 residents in jails now are scheduled to be released in the next 12 months? Is there not an argument for releasing all those, given the expected duration of the coronavirus crisis?